A child's car seat sits the Manurewa driveway where 10-month-old Poseidyn Pickering was injured in 2020. Photo / NZME
A child's car seat sits the Manurewa driveway where 10-month-old Poseidyn Pickering was injured in 2020. Photo / NZME
The idea that baby Poseidyn could have been fatally injured in an accidental fall days before his death is "fanciful" at best and runs contrary to "overwhelming medical evidence", prosecutors said today during their closing address in the murder trial of the child's father.
The argument came one day after lawyers for Anthony Simon Pickering, 32, called to testify a medical expert who said it's conceivable - although admittedly unlikely - the child could have died because of a fall from his mother's arms.
Jurors will return to the High Court at Auckland on Monday for defence's closing address as the trial stretches into its third week.
Paramedics found 10-month-old Poseidyn Hemopo-Pickering unresponsive at his Manurewa, South Auckland, home on the evening of September 5, 2020.
In the hours that followed, as medical staff at two different hospitals tried in vain to save his life, the baby was found to have complex skull fractures, with the back of his head smashed in. Broken bone from the skull had caused a laceration on the boy's brain - an injury that all medical experts agreed would have resulted in immediate unconsciousness.
"You do not see that brain laceration for a low-level fall," jurors were reminded of professor Colin Smith testifying earlier in the trial.
"It does not happen," the forensic neuropathologist said.
Crown prosecutor Todd Simmonds said today it "cannot reasonably be suggested" the baby's injuries occurred at any other time than the hours before paramedics were called - the same afternoon when Poseidyn was left alone for 16 minutes with the defendant as his mother ran an errand.
While jurors don't need a motive to convict, Simmonds said testimony about the defendant's suspicions that he might not have been the child's biological father "adds very important context".
"He resented the fact this little boy might not be his - might in fact be the son of his nephew," Simmonds said. "It's an awful thing to consider. But there's no getting away from the fact that little boy has been viciously assaulted."
The boy's mother testified during the trial that an argument over paternity just two days prior to Poseidyn's death had ended with Pickering punching her in the face as she held their child.
Police guard the scene at a house on William Ave, Manurewa, where 10-month-old Poseidyn Pickering died in September 2020. Photo / Dean Purcell
Simmonds also called jurors' attention to testimony from two relatives who said they spoke to Pickering at his son's tangi and the defendant described back-handing the child, causing Poseidyn "to go flying and hitting his head on the window sill". He said he was angry because he thought his nephew was Poseidyn's father, one of the witnesses recalled.
"Mr Pickering was certainly capable of losing his cool, of losing his temper...and significant violence, especially when the issue of Poseidyn's paternity was raised," Simmonds argued. "When that issue was on the table, he was no gentle man at all."
The defence suggested earlier this week that Poseidyn's mother dropped him on the ground two days before his death, causing the integrity of the baby's skull to weaken so that a fall from the bed days later was much more lethal than it would normally be. Sydney-based forensic pathologist Johan Duflou, who was called to testify for the defence, said such a scenario was possible even if it was not what he personally believed happened.
But Simmonds argued today there was no credible testimony that Poseidyn's mother dropped him at all in the days prior to his death. If it occurred, she testified, she didn't remember it.
Regardless, Simmonds said, all other expert testimony "rules out a low-level" fall being the cause of death. He described the defence expert as having an "anything is possible" attitude.
"Except it's not - not in the real world that we live in," he added.
Simmonds emphasised to jurors that while the burden of proof for criminal cases is "beyond a reasonable doubt", that doesn't mean throwing common sense out the window.
"The Crown does not have to eliminate any conceivable possibility," he explained. "We can always conjure up some remote, fanciful possibility. That's not the test.
"...we have to keep this real. This is beyond a reasonable doubt."
Jurors are expected to begin deliberations following the defence closing statement and summing up of the case by Justice Michael Robinson.
